for Restaurants
Sponsored Listings Targeting Playbook for Restaurants
Drive smarter, more effective ad performance with targeting strategies designed specifically for restaurant brands.
What Are Sponsored Listings?
Sponsored Listings help restaurants increase visibility and drive incremental sales by placing your store in high-impact positions across DoorDash. Your listing appears where customers are actively browsing, discovering, and making purchase decisions—helping your brand stand out in moments that matter.
With Sponsored Listings, you can:
Boost discovery and visibility
Reach high-intent customers
Drive incremental sales
Grow new customers and strengthen loyalty
Promote menu items, dish categories, and seasonal offerings
This playbook shows you how to make the most of Sponsored Listings through recommended targeting strategies aligned to your business goals.
How to Use This Playbook
This playbook helps restaurant advertisers match their business goals to the most effective Sponsored Listings targeting strategies. Each card outlines:
What the goal means
Who to target
How to sequence audiences
Which KPIs to measure
Some goals may recommend sequencing multiple audiences. In those cases, campaigns can be structured to either flex budget across audiences within a single campaign or allocate spend to specific audiences using separate campaigns, depending on your priorities.
This resource is designed for restaurant advertisers who want to improve performance, understand targeting options, and optimize for specific outcomes such as sales, new customers, item lift, frequency, or efficiency.
Targeting by Goals
Scale & Topline Sales
Maximize reach and total sales
Incremental Return (iROAS)
Maximize incremental return per Ads dollar spent
Category & Dish Growth
Grow demand within a target dish or category
New Customer Acquisition
Reach customers who have never ordered from your restaurant
Lapsed Customer Win-back
Re-engage customers who haven’t ordered recently
Existing Customer Engagement
Strengthen loyalty and repeat purchasing
Order Frequency
Encourage more frequent purchases
Time / Day-Specific Sales
Concentrate your advertising on the specific times of day and/or days of the week that matter most to your business